


The folly of youth

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Girl with a Pearl Earring - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:38:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Story by twolittledolls</p><p>Griet reflects as she slips into middle age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The folly of youth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for mardia

 

 

Young girls never knew how to be quiet. Griet couldn't remember if she had ever been that bad.  
"I'll bet you were pretty as can be back then." The younger servant girl said as she helped Griet  
put up the wet, foul smelling sacks of cloth to dry. It was too early for this sort fo conversation,  
but the young kitchen maid was clearly desperate for someone to talk to, and Griet was not about  
to alienate one of the few friends she had made in the last year.

If she had owned a mirror, Griet never would have recognized herself. She was a dead leaf echo  
of the girlchild Vermeer had known, near thirty and hopelessly worn. "They're looking for a sort  
of girl like you, men are." Marguerite teased as she hung up dyed fabric to dry in the sun. Griet  
shrugged, but said nothing. She knew better. Her knees were a patchwork lace of scars, and as  
she thrust her hands into the water for washing, they cracked and bled pink into the hot, lye  
soaked soap water. Griet liked to imagine there was a bit of the servant in everything her master  
and mistress wore now.

"You know you could find a nice man, and he might take you out of here." The girl said as she  
opened another sack of cloth. "You don't know what will happen, Griet, why don't you believe  
it? It's all happened before!" All happened before indeed. Bold girls ended up in the street,  
everyone knew that. Stupid girls ended up with child or worse.

Griet yawned and stretched in the morning courtyard light, ignoring for the most part, her  
companions silly chatter. She needed to change shoes if she was going to go out and feed the  
animals, or if she was going to go to bed without blisters.

"It'll be just one moment Marguerite, and I'll get the other washing off the line!" Griet called  
back, tugging her skirt up so she could climb the stairs to her room in the attic. When had her  
knees started to ache like that? She hadn't even noticed. Sometime between her last home, where  
she had been beaten cruelly by her mistress, and the one perhaps before it, where the threat of  
being chased around the kitchen table for a peek under her skirts seemed not worth the meager  
room and board provided, though their children had been darling and the wife, a kind girl under  
all the damask and jewelry.

It had all been a dream. What kindess she had ever seen in the redheaded woman was clearly  
error, even at her husband's funeral, her face remained expressionless. Was she sad for herself  
or the one in her belly? Griet couldn't tell, and certainly she would never get close enough  
again to find out. She would see her mistress only once or twice after that, in the market. The  
baby had strangled inside her, which the woman blamed somehow on her former servant, or  
perhaps on the death of her husband. Either way, her daughters grew too, while his widow  
remained lost in time, and now the middle child was the same age Griet had been when she  
entered servitude.

Griet closed the attic door carefully behind her, and changed into different shoes, readjusted her  
hair, and stretched, trying to make sense of the morning. After a moment, she knelt down beside  
her bed to retrieve something from under the ticking. Her fingertips searched until they found the  
box, small, wooden, long since scratched and worn from all the times her trembling hands had  
dropped it. Two pearl earrings, the gold slightly tarnished like its' owner.

"But my ears are not- " One hand tightened on her thigh, as if to stop her from crying out as the  
hot metal slid through her earlobe. Her hand clenched around his and then relaxed, the sharp  
sting blurring into a throbbing ache as she whimpered softly.

She forced one through the hole in her ear, and then with a sharp whimper of pain, pushed the  
other through as well. So they hadn't closed up just yet. A piece of broken window pane would  
have to serve for a mirror, she didn't own one of her own any longer.

Griet wondered, as she turned her head this way and that in the ever changing light from the  
window, if he would even recognize his girl protege now? Would her former master see any  
blurred beauty in the reflection staring back at her? She supposed it didn't matter, after all, he was  
dead, buried in one of those strange Catholic ceremonies. She had been invited, quietly, to stand  
at the back door and peer in from the chapel kitchen if she wanted, the abandoned servant had  
declined.

There was another thought as the light caught her earrings. It wasn't of Vermeer and the painting  
room, his hands flecked with blue, or the momentary pain of the left earring tugging on old scars.  
It was of rough hands, the smell of animal's blood. It was of wondering, strangely enough, if the  
cow was watching and if so, what she thought of it all.

The pole was digging splinters into her back through her clothes, as Griet shuddered, eyes half  
open, she stared up at the ceiling, lost in the pleasure-pain of the butcher's son having his way  
with her. When I think of this, when I remember this in a year or two or oh, that felt good, I won't  
remember Pieter's face, I won't remember this barn, I'll think only of...another gasp of pleasure  
and everything turned to lovely stars, and the smell of sweet hay as it fell on them from the loft  
above.  
Funny, what she had been trying for, and what she had ended up with after all. She took the  
earrings off and place them back in the box, wiped away any spots on blood on the fresh holes.  
Only a month until they healed enough to be pierced once again.

 


End file.
